


Shark Tales (or, Breathing Underwater)

by fall_into_life, grassyhyuuga



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fall_into_life/pseuds/fall_into_life, https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassyhyuuga/pseuds/grassyhyuuga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which what happens in Kirigakure does not stay in Kirigakure, and the particular brand of crazy of the Nidaime Mizukage is explained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A collaborative effort that should have yielded crack but didn't.

"I'll be Mizukage next," Suigetsu says confidently, running a whetstone along the edge of his sword.

Mangetsu scoffs, shakes his head. "The last time a Hozuki wore the hat, everything went to shit. Why do you think you've got a shot?"

“Nah.” Suigetsu waves off his brother’s skepticism. “That was the Sandaime. Pay more attention to history. The Nidaime was a cool guy.”


	2. Exposition

_Some say the world will end in fire,_   
_Some say in ice._

\- Robert Frost

 

* * *

 

For his fifth birthday his father gives him a filing knife. He had wanted new sandals, because sometimes the sharpness of the seaside terrain punctures the soles of his old ones and he has not quite yet mastered part-liquid transformation of his feet.

He destroys the tiny sapling of disappointment, rips it out of his heart by the root, and begins with his front teeth.

 

* * *

 

The most use he gets, at first, from his mouthful of newly-sharpened teeth is for shoring rope. His uncle, the black sheep of the family, makes his living by killing fish, not by fishing for kills. Shiosho is surefooted and nimble, so his uncle sometimes allows him to tag along on his daily trips.

 

* * *

 

Shiosho learns early on not to trust his mother.

At two, she had turned a hug into a trap, pushing his face against her taut abdomen until animal instinct and the need for oxygen took over and he melted into a puddle of tears and water at her feet. _Your first transformation_ , she had clapped, delight splashing across her face. At four, she drowns his innocence alongside his kitten. (The cat's name had been Koishi. This he remembers decades later, longer than he remembers his own name.) 

So, at six, when she insists on walking him to his first day at the Academy, he has to tense all his muscles to keep from trembling. By the time they reach the gate he is so high on fear that the world seems brighter than normal, the chatter of other children a torrent of noise.

She stops there, in full view of everyone, and presses a kiss to his forehead, sweet as poison. Then, she pulls an elegantly curved kunai from the pouch on her thigh.

"If anyone bothers you..." He receives the weapon with numb hands. It is full-sized, not like some of the miniature training knives normally given to children his age.

 "Careful, baby," his mother croons, lethally maternal. "It's sharp."

He finds out just how sharp when she takes his hand in an iron grip and swipes a finger across the blade. There is no pain, but red runs down his palm.

She hisses in an undertone. "Lick."

He does, not gagging when the coppery taste slides down his throat, and watches as his fear leaks out along with his blood and infects his future classmates instead. 

Her hand in his hair does not tug or push as usual. The touch is almost gentle, really, for his mother. 

Then she is gone, and he is left with a crowd of equally disgusted and terrified peers. Thus begins a trend that does not ever truly end for the rest of his life.

 

* * *

 

He learns more violent uses of his teeth, and _no biting_ quickly becomes an Academy sparring rule.

(Two more pre-genin lose a finger anyway, because his mother has taught him from birth that rules are for the weak, the sheep, not for sharks.)

 

* * *

 

His uncle dies, in the eyes of the Hozuki, a truly pathetic death.

 _Hozuki don't drown_ , they scoff, _how can water drown?_

The story is that his boat had been swept by a rip current then swallowed by one of Kirigakure's ravenous waves.

Shiosho can no longer stand the sound of his own name, _riptide_ , a constant omen and reminder of his loss and how little his family mourned it.

"Don't call me that," his lips curve as dangerously as that kunai from when he was six, and his teammates oblige with fear-tinged exasperation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Name meanings:
> 
> Koishi — pebble  
> Shiosho — riptide or rip current


	3. Climax

_From what I've tasted of desire_  
 _I hold with those who favour fire._

\- Robert Frost

 

* * *

 

Muu walks out of the Tsuchikage's office following one of his jerky, economical bows, the most important mission of his career tucked under his arm bound in a deceptively underfed manilla file.

_By any means necessary._

It has become a ritual by now, as habitual as breathing. He stares at the piece of paper, scrawled with adjectives and snippets of personality, before starting, methodically from birth.

_By any means necessary._

Before midnight he has an entire lifetime of memories to call upon, a new gait, distinctive patterns of speech, favourite foods and colours. As he unwraps the bandages, Koga Harou comes to life. His smile is lopsided and there is a good-humoured twinkle in his eyes.

_By any means necessary._

He goes deeper, because failure is not an option, not this time, weaves Harou's dreams from scratch, bleeds from Harou's hurts, wraps himself in his pride and shame and love and hate until Muu is nothing but a flickering ember in the layers of Harou.

_By any means necessary._

The mantra is out of place in Harou's mind — genial, compassionate, soft-spoken Harou — so it burrows like a sea snake into the sand of Harou's subconscious.

 

* * *

 

"We think the whirlpool that wrecked your ship may have been caused by the Uzushio bastards," Hozuki tells Harou, blunt and uncaring. "Did you notice anything unusual during the voyage?"

"Uzushio? You mean that ninja village down south?" Harou's eyes are wide and innocent, clear of anything that Hozuki sees in his colleagues. He wants to touch it, wants to lap it up with his tongue, wants to devour this little piece of something devoid of anything ninja. "Wow, I... I don't know." Hozuki cannot tear his gaze away from the furrow of confusion between the other man's brows. "Why would they attack the ship?"

"That's what I need you to tell me," Hozuki says. His voice is flat, professional, but he feels his pupils begging to dilate, his body language asking insistently to orient toward Harou. He knows the signs of lust, both in himself and others, but why this man? Why a shipwrecked civilian, far from home and hearth?

Harou shakes his head. "I don't know. I stayed belowdecks a lot." He smiles wryly. "I get seasick."

There are no lies in his face, no threats in his smile. His teeth are blunted, soft, unthreatening. The muscle in his arms is for lifting, not for fighting. Want flares hard in Hozuki's gut, and he stifles an inward breath. The shark in him, the part his mother always tried to nurture but ultimately failed to find, stirs.

"No guarded cargo, no one important on-board?"

His question is sloppy, too direct. They plan on letting this man go, and that means he can't know what Kiri wants to know. There are other ways, ways Hozuki has known since before he hit puberty. He could tease information out of Harou without the man realizing questions were being asked, could decide to go the other route and force the answers out. His desires are making him careless and he knows it, but it doesn't matter with Harou, because Harou isn't a ninja, Harou won't pounce on any one mistake to rip him to shreds.

"No, nothing I noticed." Harou smiles again, apologetic, guileless, his violet eyes warm. "I'm sorry I can't help more."

"Come to dinner with me." The words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them, but Hozuki can't bring himself to care. He's composing follow-up excuses, wiles, but in the end, he doesn't need them.

"Okay," Harou nods, blinking slowly. "Where do you want to go?"

Just like that. They fall into place just like that.

 

* * *

 

He cannot tell if the knot in his gut is arousal or apprehension, or even some kind of messed-up mixture of both, because when have his feelings for this man been clear-cut? He's had his share of post-battle fucks, but the scalding heat in his veins is not adrenaline or bloodlust or even just lust — though, he thinks dazedly as lips burn on his throat, making his already speeding pulse race harder, there is certainly lust. Hozuki's hands grapple for some kind of purchase, settling on clawing at the sheets.

"Harou."

The man lifts his head, pupils so dilated that only a ring of violet is visible, voice as wild as Hozuki's ever heard it. Harou will never be a predator, not in the way Hozuki is, but the hunger in his eyes scorches the air. "Don't ask me to stop."

Hozuki doesn't, because no one's ever looked at him like _that_ , so he just presses his mouth with its rows of razors to Harou's, not daring to blink. The lack of even a trace of fear in the other man's eyes wrings a moan from his throat, because this trust, this is headier than any aphrodisiac.

Then Harou's hands are everywhere, banishing everything except fire, until he understands what it is like to melt without turning into liquid.

 

* * *

 

In the following months Hozuki learns everything he can about Harou. It is refreshing — he has never put so much effort into another person before. He finds that being selfless, or less selfish, is not as much of a chore as he might have expected.

Harou is more stubborn than he in certain ways, willing to go to bed angry, while he usually caves first, stilted apologies shadowed by sunset and foreign on his tongue. For one who makes a living on the harbour, Harou bears little love for the ocean, so if sometimes his eyes glitter strangely Hozuki just twists their fingers together to ground him and pull him back from the wreckage.

He directs hailstorm wrath at anyone with anything to say about them. A flash of his fangs reminds most that he could take off a hand without using chakra.

Neither likes to cook, which is all right, because take-out dinners preemptively resolve the issue of dishes.

 

* * *

 

Hozuki has always found the concept of "pillow talk" ridiculous, thinking he would rather gag a bed partner than listen to them prattle, or worse, share his own intimate secrets.

But, with his gaze fixed on the dark head next to his, short hair tousled and face slack in almost-sleep, he finds himself wanting to change his mind.

"Hey."

His voice is too loud in this soft, peaceful atmosphere they've built, but he's never claimed to be subtle.

Harou's eyes flutter before opening, mouth slanting slightly in that devastatingly sincere smile. His lips slope even more when Hozuki leans in for a kiss, though it is unwarrantedly fierce. Hozuki draws back before the heat can carry them away and utters a forbidden word.

"Shiosho."

His lover tilts his head in question, the movement groggy from sleepiness.

"You asked me about my name."

Realisation pulls Harou forward, and this time they fit together even closer than they had the first.

 

* * *

 

_He's gone._

Hozuki forces himself to freeze, steady his breathing and pulse, because he needs to stop reacting like this every time he wakes up to an empty bed.

Sure, he has issues, but what self-respecting and respected shinobi doesn't? It isn't like Harou doesn't have a _job_ , not like he's Hozuki's kept man or something, so he better get used to this, because _his_ job doesn't usually start at the crack of fucking dawn.

He is half-dressed when the chuunin bursts into the room, and he is so ready to put the fear of Hozuki into the kid for not knocking-

"Hozuki-sama! The Mizukage is dead."

 

* * *

 

By nightfall Hozuki is ready snap a dozen genin in half.

The Shodaime is dead, his killer at large, and without his ironclad leadership the shinobi forces of Kirigakure crumble like shortbread.

And Harou is nowhere to be found.

_Please be safe_ , he thinks while barking orders at several jounin, even as dread settles in his gut, an immovable stone.

_Please be safe_ , he thinks when he questions wharf workers with barely-concealed desperation. They do not know a man named Koga Harou. (Does he? asks a part of himself that he silences immediately.)

_Please be safe_ , he thinks as the border guards report a dark-haired man of above-average height and lithe build leaving the village early this morning with laden packs. They'd thought him a merchant.

_Please_ , he thinks, not knowing anymore what he is begging for, chest tight with an unfamiliar tension that takes him a while to recognise as grief. _Please_.

 

* * *

 

His return to Iwagakure is heralded by nothing except the rising sun. He is bandaged and cold and _Muu_. He remembers the way to the Tsuchikage's office in impeccable detail, so of course he is Muu, and the side of the corridor which rests against the carved cliff wall emanates rock-chill just like before. Thirty-seven paces from this staircase to the door, ninety-degree turn, hand on handle and spin and push. (Harou has never been to the Tsuchikage's office. Muu knows it better than any building in which he has ever lived. Therefore, he is Muu.)

"Congratulations on your success."

"Thank you, Tsuchikage-sama."

The small smile that drops onto his face is perfectly symmetrical. Of course.

 

* * *

 

He surfaces with a great gasp, like a drowning man tasting air after struggling to surface. (Still Harou, still too close to Harou, still comparing everything to the sea and water and). He gapes at his own face, fumbles for the bandages next to the sink. His trembling hands wrap his face, then his neck, and it's the worst wrapping he's ever done, but it brings him back to himself, back to Muu and away from (from Harou) his cover.

He takes a deep breath, pushes down memories of love and light and laughter, and carefully re-wraps his face, condemning himself to steel and blood and duty with the same steady hands as before the assignment.

(His hands move, and his breath comes steadily, but his heart does not beat the same as it did a year ago. He knows this, and thinks he accepts it the way he accepts all the lingering traces from his other assignments.

He does not know — cannot yet know — that this is far more than any of those.)

 

* * *

 

Amidst the chaos and turmoil he is the obvious choice, the only one powerful and ruthless enough to prevent Kirigakure from dissolving into anarchy.

He dons the Mizukage's hat with nothing but frosty apathy. What is achievement, glory, without someone to share it with?

He hates his mother then, as he has never hated her before, for not teaching him right (wrong?), for not cutting out his ability to trust and love when she'd mutilated so much else.

_Never mind_ , he thinks viciously, though a part of him still throbs with hope despite everything, _I'll finish the job myself_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Name meanings:
> 
> Harou — waves  
> Koga — old river


	4. Denouement

_But if it had to perish twice,  
_ _I think I know enough of hate  
_ _To say that for destruction ice  
_ _Is also great  
_ _And would suffice._  

-Robert Frost

 

* * *

 

Hozuki is not able to catch the strangled gasp before it jumps out of his throat like a fish. 

He knows those eyes, still dreams of that voice, and as every single head at the table turns toward him he clamps his mouth shut so he will not humiliate himself any further. 

 _Please_ , he thinks, as knives of truth carve meaningless patterns onto his skin, then harder and into flesh and organ, _please let this be a dream_. 

But this is so much worse than any nightmare his scrambled-egg fucked-up mind could come up with anyway. 

"Excuse me," he manages before all but launching himself off his seat, feeling violet eyes follow him all the way to the door. There is only one sink in the men's bathroom. He shoves his head under the tap and holds his breath as cold water blisters his scalp and freezes the panic, taking relief in drowning until his vision swims and his legs wobble. 

The first lungful of air _hurts_ so much that he almost cannot take a second, but he forces himself to because Koga fucking Harou is _dead_ and the Nidaime Tsuchikage is sitting in that meeting room like some kind of smug zombie and Hozuki will show him.

What he will show him he doesn't quite know, not right now, but he _will_. 

Subsequent breaths hurt, if he is honest with himself, just as much as the first, yet he dries his hair with a quick jutsu and steps out of the bathroom before he can dissolve into bits and flush himself down a toilet. 

 

* * *

 

He reinvents a new personality for himself, makes himself bigger and more dramatic, takes cues from the late-night movies in which true love always triumphs. Year by year his collar becomes higher, the cut of his robes sharper. If Harou the midshipman loved Hozuki the Candidate Mizukage, then Muu the Nidaime Tsuchikage can love Hozuki the Nidaime Mizukage. He just has to live up to the name, be larger than the man he once was.

He'll be good enough for Muu, and then everything will be back to the way it was. 

(He knows, even then, that this is impossible.)

 

* * *

 

Hozuki, as always, has to overdo everything he does and is rapidly approaching comatose levels of inebriation. The others look to Muu as the only one completely sober, pleading with unappealing and unconvincing doe-eyes. Alcohol permeates the air as if they are in the Village Hidden in the Booze. 

He speaks through gritted teeth, the bandages filtering away the roughness of his voice. "I will take him to his room."  

Muu half-drags half-carries the man up the endless flight of stairs. In a moment of lucidity the Mizukage grimaces, expression twisting in something that is not-quite anger and not-quite like anything Muu has ever seen on that face. 

"You have legs," he snaps, irritated without reason. "Use them." 

Surprisingly, Hozuki complies with uncharacteristic meekness, coordinating his feet in something resembling a walk. 

"Key."

It takes the man three minutes to remember that he'd stuck it behind his ear, and he hands it to Muu without even a futile attempt at inserting it into the lock. 

 _God_ , he thinks with derision, _what a failure_. 

Muu all but shoves him into the room, tossing the key with deadly aim onto the coffee table. He is about to shut the door when he sees the other man sway. _If he dies, they'll think I did it_. 

"Sit down." 

He almost sighs in relief when Hozuki manages to locate the mattress with his butt. That _look_ again, this time accompanied by words so soft he has to strain to hear them. So the man _is_ capable of being quiet. 

"What more do you want?"

 _Oh_.

"Nothing," he replies, guttural and harsh, every inch the expert liar. He tells himself that he hadn't taken anything Hozuki hadn't wanted to give, and it isn't _his_ fault that the man is a horrible judge of character. "Go to sleep." 

Muu does not even check that his charge has lain down before marching out the door. He has to get out of here, because it is not _him_ who wants to smooth away lines of pain with a caress, it is not _Muu_ who aches in the face of Hozuki's drunken, pathetic anguish. 

"Nothing." He gives the whisper the weight of conviction. 

_I am Muu. I am no one._

And, just because he can, he takes his chakra off the grid and stalks back downstairs to give a tipsy Senju Tobirama the scare of his life. 

 

* * *

 

He cannot help but feel amused in the face of the Nidaime Hokage's severity. Currently the Senju is giving him his 'concerned' instead of the normal 'default' frown. 

"These talks will collapse sooner or later if you two cannot learn to get along." 

The admonition wrenches a bark of laughter from his throat, the _irony_ hitting him right where it hurts.

"Oh, we can get along." _Like a house on fire._  

The other man's expression darkens, 'concerned' shifting into 'irked'. No, a man as cold as Tobirama would not understand. He wonders how the Senju hasn't melted in the warm climate of the Land of Fire. 

"I will not have peace compromised by whatever petty feud is between you and the Tsuchikage." 

Hozuki laughs again, though all it does is tighten the coiled mass in his chest. 

"Don't worry," he manages between lingering chortles, slapping a hand onto the other man's stiffened shoulder. He does it because he can, because he knows it will piss him off, because if he doesn't he might bash his scowling face in instead. "It's not petty." 

 

* * *

 

He can't decide which is worse, the thought that Muu is looking straight through him with those eyes or looking straight _at_ him. 

Both make his blood boil, but the latter perhaps more so. With all that cloth covering his face the other man could be smirking or even _laughing_ at him with Harou's mouth. Every time the Nidaime Tsuchikage brushes him off the black, acidic rage seeps deeper into his bones. No, he could never feel apathy for this man, but he understands better than before how well his mother had taught him because-

-aren't love and hatred just two sides of the same damn coin? 

 _Mother would be proud_ , he thinks, _now that I am capable of drowning my own kitten_. 

 

* * *

 

Muu should know better than anyone else, really, the power of stories. 

Stories had built his career, because he'd been good at making them up and even better at acting them out.

The story of Koga Harou had been his masterpiece, one which had flowed and expanded of its own accord, an organic fairytale that refused to be told _the end_ and _good night sleep tight_. 

Not all fairytales have happy endings. This, Muu should know. 

 

* * *

 

When they fight, disdain makes way for grudging respect, because the man is _dangerous_ , fast, crafty in a way that contrasts with his usual overblown theatricality.  

Hozuki grabs blades from thin air and pushes wave after wave of genjutsu at him. He surfs them with glowing hands, gathering the energy needed to fire off his most powerful techniques. The stalemate lasts for some time — they are, after all, quite evenly matched — until Muu leans forward and breaks one of the weaker ripples of illusion.

Only to find Hozuki gone, dissipating in the sudden way of mirages and _shit_ he turns but it's too late, the tide has turned and something about the other man's erratic movements tells him this time, staying alive is a secondary objective for the Mizukage. 

 

* * *

 

"I loved you," he says with such hate in his eyes that Muu wonders if it is the wound or the loathing that is killing him.  

"He loved you, too." 

He dies with a crooked smile on his lips. 


	5. Epilogue

"I don't see what's so cool about a guy who left Kiri to rot while he went and got himself killed."

Suigetsu gives him a pitying smile, as if he is the older brother. "You don't get it."

"Don't get what." Irritated now, brows drawn, a gleam of teeth.

"Some things," Suigetsu says, with a wisdom far beyond both their years, "are worth it. Or else we wouldn't be talking about him now, would we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realised I'd forgotten to post the epilogue. 
> 
> Feedback is greatly appreciated!


End file.
